The NLJ reports:
Supreme Court's Style Manual is Private No More. How do you get one of these 200+ page gems? The article explains:
The U.S. Supreme Court Style Manual, viewed by the justices as an internal document for helping law clerks and justices draft opinions in proper form, is going public for the first time, without the court's approval.
Jack Metzler, a court aficionado who published the Solicitor General’s Style Guide in 2013, said Sunday he put up the Supreme Court's manual for sale on an Amazon publishing website, retailing for $29.95.
 |
| A more interesting sort of 'secret book'? |
Most
of the guide deals with style, not substance, answering questions like how to
use words like supra
and ibid in the
text or footnotes of opinions, and whether punctuation marks should ever be
italicized. (They should not.) The proper use of quotation marks takes up five
pages of the manual.
***
But one substantive entry seems to resolve a long-simmering debate
among court geeks about why the court, when it rejects a lower court ruling,
sometimes "reverses" it and other times "vacates" it."In virtually every term," the manual states, "the
question arises whether the Court should vacate, as opposed to reverse,
particular lower court judgments. The rule of thumb applied by the Office of
the Clerk of the Court is easy to state, but may be difficult to apply in
particular instances: This Court should reverse if it deems the judgment below
to be absolutely wrong, but vacate if the judgment is less than absolutely
wrong. Questions in difficult cases should be directed to the Chief Deputy
Clerk."
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